Enterprise Computing: Hitachi Bloggers Day

This time next week I shall be in the middle of the first HDS Bloggers Day, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday 15/16th June 2010. I’m well versed in HDS (or Hitachi, depending on how they preferred to be known) storage products, mainly their large enterprise arrays. I doubt we’ll see revelations on the upcoming USP V replacement due in the autumn, however this event does offer me two things:

Access to execs to find out what the Hitachi “strategy” is and how they intend to keep ahead of the competition.

Taking the first point, it may not be obvious but Hitachi already sell a range of servers and recently announced they intend to join in the unified computing game. At this stage I can’t see how they’re intending to handle the network piece of the stack and am keen to understand how they will address that. In addition, as Hitachi sell servers and storage (and storage they themselves manufacture), I’d expect integration across the stack to be tight and slick (let’s see). The HP Blades Day earlier this year gave me insight into the issues involved in delivering a solid unified computing architecture; the Gestalt IT Field Day last year started that process off, looking at MDS Micro, Xsigo and VMware. Let’s hope HDS/Hitachi have something good up their sleeves.

That takes us to the second point; access to execs. So far, we’ve been told the following execs will be present; I’ve listed them here with the Hitachi supplied bios (not my own words). I’m hoping to grab a few minutes with each, to do some video interviews. There are some tough questions to answer, not all technology-based, but rather around the way Hitachi approaches marketing & social media in general. Here’s the list:

Claus Mikkelsen <http://blogs.hds.com/claus/> – Industry veteran and storage guru, Claus Mikkelsen is CTO of Storage Architectures at Hitachi Data Systems. As part of the CTO office, Claus shares responsibility for new technology research for storage applications, storage virtualization and data life cycle management.

Michael Hay <http://blogs.hds.com/michael/> – Michael Hay is a Sr. Director of Product Strategy for Hitachi Data Systems. Michael is based in Japan and is currently leading key product and solution design efforts for Hitachi’s storage business. Michael will be co emcee of #HDSday with Pete Gerr.

Mark Adams – Platform Product Marketing lead for the AMS 2000 family and all things modular

Pete Gerr <http://blogs.hds.com/michael/> – HDS blogger, director of Strategic and Solutions Marketing. Focused on exploring information’s past, present, and future, the balance between ‘business’ and ‘technology’, all while keeping one eye open for the next disruptive force. Will be co emcee of #HDSday with Michael Hay.

Attendees

Other than myself, the attendee list consists of the usual suspects, plus a number of new faces. Here’s the list of attendees I’m currently aware of:

I know many of these guys and you can guarantee the discussion will be lively and thoughtful.

Now to some admin; the Twitter hashtag for the event will be #hdsday. I’ll be tweeting from my blogging twitter account, @thestgarch. Feedback from previous events commented negatively on the volume of tweets being issues from multiple attendees. Consequently, if you don’t want the specific HDS Bloggers Day session tweets, don’t follow @thestgarch. If you want them, then follow me. I’ll still be doing travel and general updates on @chrismevans. I’ll post more on the event as it develops next week.

About Chris M Evans

Chris M Evans has worked in the technology industry since 1987, starting as a systems programmer on the IBM mainframe platform, while retaining an interest in storage. After working abroad, he co-founded an Internet-based music distribution company during the .com era, returning to consultancy in the new millennium. In 2009 Chris co-founded Langton Blue Ltd (www.langtonblue.com), a boutique consultancy firm focused on delivering business benefit through efficient technology deployments. Chris writes a popular blog at http://blog.architecting.it, attends many conferences and invitation-only events and can be found providing regular industry contributions through Twitter (@chrismevans) and other social media outlets.